1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of plasma technology and may be used in electronics and electrical engineering when treating planar elements, for example, semiconductor wafers, substrates, printed circuit boards, compact disks and other products.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has long been known a device for studying a plasma-surface interaction, a device that comprises a plasma generator, a power source therefor, a system for the plasma generator displacement, a system for displacing samples, a gas distribution system and a control system (see, Theses of the Reports at the 10th All-Union Conference, P. P. Kulik et al., “Low-Temperature Plasma Generators,” Part II, Minsk, ITMS Publishers, Academy of Sciences of Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1986, p. 135). However, this device has a number of disadvantages.
The absence of a quick-operating loading-unloading system results in a large expenditure of time and, hence, plasma generator energy that is consumed to no purpose when plates-samples to be treated are replaced. The inability to simultaneously treat several plates-samples, one right after another, decreases the output of the device.
The fact that there are present in this device a number of control and measuring means that inhibit any repeated treatment of samples according to a rigidly prescribed cycle, unambiguously defines this device as one purely for research.
Taken together, the above-mentioned features result in the fact that the device cannot be used under conditions of series production.
The closest prior art has been described in International Application No. WO 92/21220, H05H 1/40, 1992, which discloses a device for treating wafers with a plasma jet, comprising a plasma jet generator; gas supplying means; a set of holders for wafers to be treated, said holders being structurally made in the form of a turntable having a drive for effecting angular displacement thereof and for facing a generator plasma jet turned downwards; each of the holders being made in the form of a horizontal platform mounted for rotation about the axis passing through the center thereof and being perpendicular to the plane of said platform; and said plasma jet and wafer holder having the possibility of being displaced with respect to each other in the direction of at least one axis of coordinates and of being in or out of contact with each other.
The main drawbacks associated with this device include an underproductivity created by the large number of manual operations necessary when loading-unloading the wafers to be treated. In addition, the wafers treated are inferior in quality due to the possibility of surface damage when contact-attaching in the holder.
Moreover, the direction of the plasma jet from top to bottom necessitates taking the measure of the cooling of the plasma generator from overheating caused by upwardly moving hot gases formed during operation of the plasma generator.